Page 19 of The Secrets of Dragonfly Lodge
‘Not medicine, no. I’ve written “scientific research” as my aim.’
‘Oh yes, I see. I don’t think we’ve had any girls choose that before.’
‘I don’t know exactly what I want to do yet, but I like to find out how things work. And why.’
‘Splendid, I’m sure,’ Miss Everard said vaguely, her eyebrows meeting in puzzlement. ‘But perhaps you’d consider balancing your choices by the inclusion of English or History instead of Physics? Or French, what about French? A useful skill and it’s good to have wide cultural interests. One needs to be able to sustain a conversation on social occasions and all these sciences might frighten… people off.’ By ‘people’, it was clear she meant ‘men’.
Nancy shook her head. ‘I read books all the time and I know heaps of history.’
‘Do you now?’ Miss Everard frowned. She studied Nancy’s list again and chewed her lip.
‘And I play the piano,’ Nancy went on, ‘and go to shows. I do have cultural interests, you see.’
‘I understand perfectly. But Physics. I’d counsel against Physics. Miss Bodily… Her time is taken up with the younger age groups.’ She gazed at the window and said to herself, ‘I often think we need to recruit another Physics mistress, but good ones are hard to come by and there simply isn’t the demand here for sixth form.’
Nancy’s heart sank. She should have thought of this herself. The only Physics mistress in the school was Miss Bodily and she was barely up to engaging fifteen- and sixteen-year-olds at School Certificate level.
‘Perhaps Botany instead of Physics, dear, then you’d have your sciences and maths and something a bit lighter. Drawing plants is enjoyable and gardening is always a useful skill.’
Nancy nodded, crestfallen, but since it was the living sciences that engaged her most, perhaps the study of plants would suit her.
Miss Everard penned the minor adjustment to Nancy’s form, then signed it.
‘There we are. Send the next girl in, will you?’
‘Thank you, Miss Everard,’ Nancy mumbled as she rose with a feeling of relief.
‘Good luck,’ she whispered as she held the door open for the girl waiting outside. Then she hurried along the hushed, wood-panelled hallway and out into a wide corridor that echoed with the soft footsteps from indoor shoes and snorts of girlish laughter. A comforting savoury smell intensified as she made her way towards the refectory. With luck, there’d be some luncheon left.
She’d loved this school since joining it as a serious nine-year-old in a too-big blazer, eager to learn. Aunt Rhoda had been doubly generous with school fees, insisting that Helen should attend the school, too, though Nancy’s mother had argued that her biddable elder daughter was perfectly happy at Mrs Brock’s School for Young Ladies. It was a small private school that taught cookery and needlework alongside Maths, the humanities and General Science, preparing its pupils for the School Certificate at sixteen before releasing them into a world where, once the war ended, marriage and children would be their most likely occupation. Nancy’smother thought the curriculum very genteel, and Mrs Brock herself was well-connected. She was cousin to an earl.
‘She should have the same academic chances as her little sister,’ Nancy heard her father declare with finality one Saturday morning, and her mother had cried, ‘Oh, no one cares about my opinion,’ and marched off to the kitchen to bottle blackberries. In truth, Mrs Foster was relieved that Rhoda would pay for Helen’s schooling. Roger’s boarding fees at Rugby, his father’s alma mater, were a source of anxiety.But why couldn’t the money be spent on Mrs Brock’s?Mrs Foster moaned to her cousin Ruth on the telephone. Nancy’s father often took Rhoda’s side over his wife’s. ‘He hardly listens to me.’
In the refectory, Nancy loaded up her tray. She sat by herself at one of the trestle tables and, while she ate her potato, cheese and sponge pudding, noticed Helen sitting with her friends at the other side of the hall. Helen at eighteen was elegant in her navy tunic and white blouse, her pretty blonde hair curled around her face, her wide brown eyes happy and guileless. She’d hardly acknowledged Nancy’s existence at school, but then Nancy didn’t expect her to. She herself took no notice of younger girls. Helen had chosen arts subjects for her Higher Certificate. While Nancy’s reports said things like ‘A brilliant performance, but must learn to be more decorous if she is to succeed in life,’ Helen’s said ‘Works quietly but well’ and ‘Full marks for effort, Helen.’ Her sister was good at netball, had been made a prefect and was expected to scrape through her exams in the summer. It was funny to think that Helen would soonbe gone from the school and instead it would be she, Nancy, who would sit up in the gallery at morning assembly with the rest of the sixth form, looking very grown up. These days, she made an effort to dress smartly. Her mother held that a neat appearance ‘made up for a lot’. Nancy knew she wasn’t pretty like Helen, but she’d once overheard Aunt Rhoda say that with her dark hair and light grey-blue eyes her younger niece was ‘very striking’.
She considered her conversation with ‘The Ever-Hard’ as she spooned up the last bit of sponge and couldn’t help feeling disappointment. Physics might be boring, but she sensed the subject was important to her future plans. She’d read inThe Girls’ Own Paperabout Marie Curie and knew that she had been a physicist as well as a chemist; her pioneering work on radioactivity had won her Nobel Prizes in both subjects. Well, it couldn’t be helped if the school didn’t offer it. Nancy wouldn’t miss measuring the speed of marbles, and Botany would probably be useful. Perhaps she should ask the advice of another of her teachers, but who? Biology was the subject she enjoyed most, but dear Miss Kingston would never go against the headmistress. It was a pity that so many of the teachers were old. It was the war, she supposed. The young ones had volunteered and left. Miss James, the sweet-faced English mistress who’d become a coder, had been killed in Egypt when the jeep she’d been travelling in had hit a mine. Everything could be blamed on the war – disgusting powdered egg, nights broken by air raids, her brother Roger being called up, even the fact that her father was losing his hair. But Hitler was being beaten,wasn’t he, his armies pushed back, and she felt full of hope for the future.
That summer, Nancy took her School Certificate exams. She passed with flying colours and loved the following two years in the Sixth. Botany with Miss Reeves involved a great deal of drawing, gardening and learning Latin names, but little of academic rigour.
Maths and Chemistry made up for that and, crucially for Nancy, Miss Everard managed to persuade a well-qualified young man, invalided out of the forces, to become a Biology master at the school. Nancy caught his enthusiasm for his subject as the class dissected animal organs and marvelled at the delicate threads and fibres of flesh that supported life. Sandy-haired and hawk-nosed, Mr Harris was no Adonis, but as the only male teacher in the school he became the subject of intense female interest. He had an unfortunate habit of blushing uncontrollably and the girls played on this. A lesson about reproduction in rabbits had to be abandoned after sly questions about how bunny babies were conceived. Thank heavens the syllabus didn’t cover the facts of life for humans or he’d have died of embarrassment! When it was announced in the final assembly of the year that Mr Harris was getting married during the summer holidays, one of the fifth-formers swooned and had to be carried out. Several others actually wept with disappointment.Silly things, Nancy thought.
Sixty years later, in the sitting room of her cottage, Nancy turned a page of the exercise book and smiled at her memories. How innocent they had all been then. She certainly hadn’t wept. Mr Harris had been crucial to her for another reason. He’d fired in her a love for his subject.
She looked down at a clumsy drawing of hazel catkins and could almost hear Miss Reeves’ tuts of annoyance at Nancy’s failure to sharpen her pencil. She closed the frail book and rose to return it to the shelf. She’d done all right in the exams, though.
Time for bed. She shooed Tabitha into the kitchen and poured herself a glass of water. At the foot of the stairs, she felt the dizziness again and paused, her hand on the newel post, until it passed. Then she began to climb, slowly, cursing her stiff knees. Four or five steps up, she took her hand off the bannister to adjust her grip on the heavy glass, but the toe of her slipper caught under a riser and her other foot slid away. Her hand flew to the bannister but missed. For a long moment, she teetered, flailing, and then she fell, the glass spilling water down the wall before landing with a soft thud on the rug beside her.
Eleven
As Stef sat down to work on Tuesday morning, Ted’s white Transit van drew up in the lane below her bedroom window and her eyes narrowed as she watched Ted climb out. Funny, Mum hadn’t said anything about him coming. The newly mended doorbell rang out, but her mother didn’t answer it. When it sounded again, Stef pushed back her chair with a sigh and hurried downstairs.
‘Is your ma about?’ Ted stood on the doorstep, his eyes shining with good humour.
‘I think she must be out in the garden.’
‘I’ll go through and see, shall I?’ He placed a tentative foot inside.
Irritated by this presumption yet too embarrassed to ask him his business, she let him in, but followed him closely through the kitchen and out through the back door. Her mother looked up from weeding and greeted him with a smiling ‘Ted, how lovely to see you!’, so Stef frowned and left them to it.
